Abstract
Many aspects of the postwar economic development of Taiwan and South Korea can be persuasively explained as responses to US foreign policy. In some respects, US policy toward the two countries has been similar. In others, it has been very different, and the results have differed accordingly. Of course, the unique political culture and colonial history of each state has also shaped its responses to US moves and helps explain why, under similar circumstances, different choices have been made.
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Notes
The National Taiwan Institute of Technology, which was established in 1974, provided advanced training for technical careers. It was projected to have enrolled over 2000 students by 1980. See Ralph N. Clough, Island China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) pp. 120–31. Moreover, there has been an effort to use the military in Taiwan for development since the 1960s. The burden of a 600,000-man military inevitably caused strains on the labor supply, especially in earlier years in the rural areas. Aside from the use of the military for construction and ‘civic action’ work in the rural sector, a technical vocational training program was added to the military training program for draftees in this period.
See Hungdah Chiu, ‘The Future of Political Stability in Taiwan’, in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Taiwan: One Year After United States-China Normalization (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1980) p. 37. As a measure of the bias toward the liberal arts among Taiwan’s students, Chiu estimates that in 1978–9 about 40 per cent of the island’s students were studying the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and the law (ibid., p. 42).
Wanki Paik, ‘Psychocultural Approach to the Study of Korean Bureaucracy’, in Se-Jin Kim and Chi-won Kang, Korea: a Nation in Transition (Seoul: Research Center for Peace and Unification, 1971) p. 241.
James C. Davies, ‘The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion’, in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, The History of Violence in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1969),
cited in Chong-Sik Lee, ‘South Korea 1979: Confrontation, Assassination and Transition’, Asian Survey, XX, 1 (January 1980) 66. Labor discontent has been an important source of political instability in Korea, in spite of strict government prohibitions against independent labor activities. There are only government-sanctioned labor unions in Korea, which operate within tight parameters set by government decree. Unauthorized labor activity is generally dealt with very harshly (ibid., p. 76).
Gregory Henderson summed up this particular Korean political dynamic: ‘South Korea seems likely to continue with a democratically tinged authoritarianism, publicly tolerated while successful, unstable when beleaguered.’ See Henderson, Korea: the Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) p. 367.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, President Park invested considerable effort and personal prestige in developing advanced missiles, particularly missiles with greater range than those which the United States had permitted to be transferred. Park perceived military advantages to be derived from the possession of a missile capable of hitting Pyong-yang, a military objective that US defense advisors considered neither necessary nor desirable. (From interviews in Seoul, 1982.) Much attention was paid during this period to Park’s concurrent efforts to develop nuclear capabilities, undoubtedly related in a significant way to the missile program. These are thought to have been terminated in 1975–6 as a result of US pressure. See, for example, Robert Gillette, ‘US Squelched Apparent South Korea A-Bomb Drive’, Los Angeles Times, 4 November 1978, p. 1; ‘South Korea Suspension Last Week of Negotiations with France’, Nucleonics Week (5 February 1976) pp. 9–10; Young-sun Ha, ‘Nuclearization of Small States and World Order: the Case of Korea’, Asian Survey, XI (November 1978) 1134–51. Although the nuclear development program was reported in the United States to have been under the aegis of a special ad hoc government committee that reported directly to the Blue House (the so-called Weapons Exploitation Committee), the effort to develop a missile delivery capability for nuclear as well as conventional warheads was apparently under the control of the Agency for Defense Development, the R&D arm of the Ministry of Defense. It is thought that pressure from President Park on its director to achieve results led to severe upheavals within ADD. In the end, ADD consistently exaggerated the progress it was making in order to maintain its position with Park. Although estimates of the costs of this program are not available, they are thought to have been extremely high, causing severe constraints on other development goals. (From interviews in Seoul, 1982.)
For a fuller discussion of the structure of defense in South Korea, see Ralph Clough, Deterrence and Defense in South Korea (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978).
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© 1986 Janne E. Nolan
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Nolan, J.E. (1986). Conclusion: a Broad View of Security. In: Military Industry in Taiwan and South Korea. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18116-2_5
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